“Most people don’t come to metal music in search of traditional “beauty” per se, but I’m always surprised and bewitched when I run into an album that is simultaneously heavy and gorgeous. Equinox Vigil, the third full-length from Minneapolis project Inexorum, is just such an album.” Beauty in the depths.
“For the second year in a row, a return-to-form album from a well-established black metal entity has somehow found its way into my greasy clutches. 2020 saw me covering …and Oceans and their phenomenal Cosmic World Mother, a record that presented itself after a long hiatus as an amalgamation of the band’s experimentation and growth through the years, while simultaneously capturing the spirit and style of the band’s origins. Well, change the year to 2021 and the band name to Seth, and that last sentence still works for the most part.” Seth and taxes.
“Thanks to that one boozy pirate-themed power metal band whose name rhymes with “Sail Dorm,” it’s difficult to take oceanic themed albums seriously. There are plenty of bands that have torn it up, Ahab showcasing mammoth waves with their breed of crushing funeral doom, Isis displaying the uncaring expanse with shoegaze-y post-metal, and Firtan and Déluge offering some respective symphonic black and post-black to reflect he majesty of the oceans. Scrolling through my black metal collection and each album’s respective themes goes something like this: winter, winter, occult, winter, occult, occult, evil, winter, etc. Oceanic-themed black metal is few and far between, and you’d be hard-pressed to find the good stuff. Will Thermohaline kickstart a new trend or will it end up drowning in its own ambition?” The sea was angry that day, my fiends.
El Cuervo and Diabolus in Muzaka want in on this whole Top Ten(ish) thing that’s going around. Let them have a turn.
GardensTale and Ferrous Beuller uncork their best spirits of 2020 and share iron libations with everyone. Cheers!
Holdeneye and Cherd of Doom made these long-winded lists and now they’re your problem. No trade backsies!
No, YOU’RE a farce!
“Over a decade after leaving …and Oceans behind, original guitarists Timo Kontio and Teemu Saari reunited to resurrect it, rounding out the band with a new cast of characters. What have constant stylistic change, new blood, and time have done to the band’s sound?” Mutation and adaptation.
“Industrial metal hasn’t had a great run as of late. The few I have reviewed in my three-year tenure at AMG did not fare well. In fact, the only good industrial metal I have heard in that time was the new Rammstein earlier this year, meaning the underground has delivered exactly zilch. Of course, I may have simply missed a whopper, but fact remains that most bands touting the term seem to use it as an excuse to blow out the speakers with horrendous production and/or use it as an ersatz term for metalcore or nu-metal. Maybe the debut from upstarts Northern Genocide can make a difference.” The Devil’s factory.
“When I think back to metal’s halcyon days the mid-2000’s is not a time period that gets conjured in my mind, but to Eversin that identity-starved period is their lighthouse, keeping them on an even keel through waters of overcooked angst, clumsy Photoshop filters and a major escalation in the loudness wars.” It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times….
